Cádiz goes 100% renewables on electricity supply

• City’s utility to buy only power from renewable sources on wholesale market
• Move means city will slash emissions of CO2 by 58,500 metric tons per year

Spain’s southwestern port city of Cádiz has taken a giant step toward sustainability, announcing this week that the city’s majority-owned Eléctrica de Cádiz utility company will henceforth buy only 100 percent renewable energy on Spain’s wholesale electricity market.

The announcement, made in a press conference by the city’s councilor for Economy and Finance, David Navarro, and the utility’s general manager, José Luis Molina, means that the power company’s 62,000 clients in Cádiz will now be consuming electrcity only from renewable sources and will not be contributing to generation of carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions deemed harmful to the environment and a chief cause of global warming.

According to Molina, Eléctrica de Cádiz distributes about 195 million kilowatts per year to homes and businesses in the city and the switch to renewables means that Cádiz electricity consumers will now cease to emit an estimated 58,500 metric tons of CO2 and 93,000 miligrams of radioactive particles each year. An average family in Cádiz that consumes 2,100 kilowatts of electricity each year. he added, will see its carbon emissions level drop by 630 kilograms annually as a result of the new program.